Seahawks’ Derrick Coleman Surprises Hearing-Impaired Girls

ABC News (NEW YORK) -- There will be two very special guests at this Sunday’s Super Bowl game in New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium thanks to one of the game’s biggest stars. Seattle Seahawks’ fullback Derrick Coleman became a viral star after a Duracell commercial showed his unlikely path from a legally deaf child to the first legally deaf offensive player in the National Football League.

After Coleman’s team defeated the San Francisco 49ers on Jan. 20 to make it to the Super Bowl, where they will face the Denver Broncos, the NFL star received an adoring letter from a 9-year-old girl who, like her twin sister, is also hearing impaired.

The letter was tweeted to Coleman by their father, Jake Kovalcik.

“I know how you feel,” one of the twins, Riley Kovalcik, wrote to Coleman, 23. “I also have hearing aids. Just try your best. I have faif [sic] in you.”

At that time, Riley and her twin sister, Erin, were just two of the millions of people who had seen Coleman’s Duracell ad on TV and online.

“The first time I saw it, we were actually tearing a little bit,” Riley, of New Jersey, told ABC's Good Morning America. “We were so happy that there was actually somebody that was good and could understand everything about hearing aids and that could help you.”

“And he actually, he speaks for saying that anything can be done, even with a disability,” she said.

For Riley and Erin, getting to meet their hero -- who wrote a letter back to Riley, calling her “a friend who I have so much in common with” -- was only a dream.

“I would probably just run past the security guards, under their legs, right past the security guards…[and] jump on top of him,” Riley said, when asked how she would react if her dream came true.

Luckily for Coleman, in reality, Riley was too starstruck to run after Coleman when he appeared just moments later, in a surprise meeting captured by GMA cameras.

“Oh my gosh, are you really?,” said a stunned Erin.

Coleman taking time from his pre-Super Bowl schedule to meet with the twins was only the first surprise he brought with him.

“On behalf of Duracell, we want to invite you guys to the Super Bowl,” he told Riley and Erin. “You and your little brother, your dad, your mom...come watch us play.”

“Really?” and “Seriously?” were at first the only words the twins could utter, before eventually giving their hero a hug and a “thank you.”